hese things come and go in infants.” Captain Arthur Keller (Victor Jory) and his wife Kate (Inga Swenson) are concerned about the health of their newborn. Even after the doctor suggests that baby Helen will turn out all right, her parents are horrified to discover that she can’t see or hear – a twinning of afflictions that seems too much to bear or overcome. Arthur and Kate are, quite simply, entirely unprepared and unequipped to handle this situation.

“Something oughta be done with that child.” Nevertheless, Helen (Patty Duke) grows up a few years, causing havoc in the Keller household, which also welcomes another baby. Helen continually knocks things over, gets into fights with other children, and can’t help but to be dirty (especially since she can only use her hands and body to navigate the world around her). Her family, including adult half-brother James (Andrew Prine) and elderly Aunt Ev (Kathleen Comegys), are at their wits’ ends (becoming cranky, sarcastic, or short-tempered to cope), uncertain of how to deal with the destructive, occasionally violent girl’s presence, but certain that the situation must change. The best specialists have all failed, but a young woman, Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft), harboring her own difficult past (detailed through haunting flashbacks like those so effectively used in later films such as “Midnight Cowboy”) and partial blindness, who only recently graduated and has yet to teach anyone herself, could be the long-awaited solution.

“Every day she slips further away. I don’t know how to call her back.” With the utmost patience and an unfathomable degree of compassion, Annie begins the long, slow, difficult process of teaching Helen not just sign language and proper communication, but also how to behave; due to a lack of understanding, Helen is often rewarded for throwing tantrums, as the Kellers don’t know how to discipline her (the bulk of their interactions involve pity and acquiescence; their unwillingness to govern with a strong hand makes them one of the bigger problems for Helen’s learning). In one of the most groundbreaking sequences, full of aggravating repetition and extraordinary stubbornness, Annie chaotically forces Helen to sit at the dinner table and use a spoon to eat – resulting in an inordinate amount of broken furniture, strewn food, and bruised appendages (a microcosmic moment of tough-love tutelage, perfectly encapsulated in a lengthy, single scene). This segment, along with others to follow, are educational, dramatic, and comedic – but also heartbreaking in their presentation of a human with such striking limitations, with such colossal obstacles to overcome, necessary to coexist within an ordinary family setting.

“The room’s a wreck, but her napkin is folded.” Based on a successful stage play (by William Gibson, who also wrote the screenplay), with this biographical adaptation utilizing a comparably few number of locations and players and props, it’s essentially a two-person show, with Bancroft delivering a tour-de-force performance, opposite a completely convincing Duke. Their portrayals are so compelling and strong, in fact, that the supporting roles appear weak and inauthentic by comparison. What ensues is a protracted duel (or a war!), with fiery attitudes clashing until breakthroughs – seeming miracles – can be made. It’s at once infuriating, saddening, inspirational, and triumphant; and during each of these phases, in which it shifts between moods as Annie and Helen’s bond grows through alternating bouts of sternness and generosity, it’s also highly, unforgettably emotional (Laurence Rosenthal’s score helps considerably, too).

– Mike Massie